The nearly universally hostile reaction to Alberta Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf’s announcement last Thursday that the province had imposed a seven-month freeze on new renewable electricity generation projects over one megawatt seems to have taken the United Conservative Party by surprise.
The first reaction was shock, followed immediately by grim warnings the province’s successful renewables industry might not survive such blatant market interference, dark assessments of the Smith Government’s motives, and outrage that no one from the government bothered to ask the up-to-now successful renewables industry what it thought of the plan.
Mr. Neudorf, who is also one of Ms. Smith’s two deputy premiers, claimed pathetically he’d meant to meet industry representatives. “We were trying to,” he lamely told a TV interviewer. “Unfortunately we had a bit of a scheduling glitch and we weren’t able to get there.” If anyone believes that, apparently they don’t have a social media account. A flat tire would have made a better excuse.
On Saturday, in full gaslighting mode, Premier Danielle Smith uncancelled her cancelled radio appearance to go on her freebie Global News/Corus Entertainment Your Province, Your Premier radio show and blame Ottawa for the UCP-created mess.
It was all Ottawa’s fault for creating uncertainty about new natural-gas fired plants to provide back-up power for new wind and solar electricity generating installations, she insisted in a windy and frequently inaccurate response to a caller’s question.
“The federal government doesn’t want us to add any new natural gas to the grid,” Ms. Smith said. “So I’ve told them, how can I bring on additional wind and solar if I’m not able to secure the reliability of my power grid by being able to bring on natural gas peaker plants?”
My power grid? L’État … c’est moi?”
Summarized, Ms. Smith’s rambling argument was that her regulators all asked for the pause, so she had no choice; that “every time you bring wind and solar on the grid, you have to have a backup” and no one will build backup generation because the feds have created uncertainty in the market; that we don’t know what the reclamation costs for wind and solar are; plus that wind and solar are unreliable; that last winter she drove past a solar plant for seven months that “was covered with ice and snow and not producing a single iota of power;” that the NDP took reliable coal off-stream and that was bad; and that “we’re going to end up with grid instability, and we just can’t have that!”
I’m no expert on electricity markets, dear readers, but this sure sounded to me like Ms. Smith was really putting the gas back into gaslighting.
You can listen to the show or read my transcription of her answer and hear for yourself what she had to say. You may not be impressed, but you’ve kind of got to admire her use of iota!
Regardless of the merits of Premier Smith’s stream-of-consciousness argument – and opponents, including business people, didn’t hesitate to point them out – it showed a premier on her back foot, doing damage control on the fly.
Interestingly, there was no mention in her bloviations about protecting agricultural land, which was mentioned in Thursday’s announcement and is supposedly a prime reason for this policy.
“When did an Alberta conservative government ever de-boom a thriving economic sector?” asked Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid the day after the announcement. “Never – until Thursday, when the UCP announced a six-month* moratorium on new green energy projects.”
Mr. Braid, often a reliable medium for UCP talking points, went on like that, sharply critical, debunking the government’s narrative, pointing out the hypocrisy of a government that never interferes with anything the fossil fuel industry proposes no matter how destructive and then drops a moratorium on the production of clean energy.
The reason, in Mr. Braid’s view: “One reason is significant hostility to the green agenda in the UCP base. That’s reflected by some members of the UCP’s powerful rural caucus. The government owes the rural sector for its election win. Now it’s paying, dramatically.”
Any Alberta government should understand that when you’ve lost Mr. Braid, you’re in deep trouble. (It’s not as bad as losing Rick Bell, another Postmedia bloviator, though. When you’ve lost Mr. Bell, as former premier Kenney found out at the end of his tenure last year, you’re done for!)
Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail quoted wind and solar industry executives explaining the decision could cause billions of investment dollars to go to the United States and Europe instead of unreliable Alberta in what was on-track to be a record year for renewables in the province.
Of course, the freeze helps the UCP’s claim that meeting Ottawa’s net-zero electricity target by 2035 is impossible – even if it’s the UCP’s policy that made it impossible!
Who benefits, asked energy journalist Markham Hislop. “The incumbent utilities with their gas power plants, that’s who,” he tweeted. “IMO, the moratorium has little to do with reclamation and ag land use, and everything to do with minimizing the development of wind/solar/storage to benefit Alberta utilities.”
Others have pointed to the similarity between the UCP’s talking points about renewable-energy generation and the Republican Party’s attacks on efforts to introduce competition to the monopoly held by U.S. gas and coal electricity generation corporations.
The Alberta government has never had a problem approving oil and gas projects without a moratorium, of course.
And, by the way, it’s not true that that solar farm Ms. Smith glimpsed from her car produced no electricity for seven months. And nor is the claim the coal-phase out has anything to do with current electricity prices, said University of Alberta economist Andrew Leach.
Then there’s the question of what’s in that “expert panel” on energy futures that the UCP commissioned – and then buried.
What did the 150 CEOs (actually, four, plus one PR guy) that the premier listens to on the “Premier’s Advisory Council on Alberta’s Energy Future” have to say about a moratorium to throttle renewable projects? Anything? Nothing? We may never know.
There was even talk, in the wake of the decision, of using Mr. Kenney’s Citizen Initiative Act to try to recall the government over this.
So this moratorium is going to continue to cause trouble for the UCP as long as it’s in place, and quite possibly afterward.
*I cannot explain why most media insist that a freeze that is two days short of seven months is a six-month freeze. The government’s news release says it started on August 3 and will continue until Feb. 29, 2024. DJC
Trying to make sense of what Danielle Smith says is quite a challenge. The UCP screws up, and it’s back to the blame Ottawa game. This happened before, under premier Ralph Klein. He also screwed up very badly, and it was somehow Ottawa’s fault. We are paying exorbitant prices for power, because of Ralph Klein’s deregulation. There were people who said that deregulation was a stupid thing to do, such as power engineers, but Ralph Klein had his own mindset. The UCP hasn’t helped make power prices go down either. I can’t understand why Albertans would support this. We didn’t have this foolishness under Peter Lougheed.
Rural Albertans support this because they think their “enemies” are being punished by the TBA government. That’s it. The only thing TBA supporters care about is stigginit to the dippers and libtards.
I think it’s the frac water they drink.
thisnis a fake news artcile. whom is upset? a small littlw.ragtag grouo of socialists? please . albertans rely on cleanenergy like oir alberta sweet crude and naturalgas . dont try to lie to albertans you find yourself without a job.
The arrogance that you somehow control whether or not MR DJC has gainful employment belies the ignorance of your comment. You hating everyone that is to the left of Adam Smith does have any bearing on the factuality of the reporting in this article, nor does it mean that anyone at all agrees with you. Plenty of folks are mad about this, not just those who’s businesses are directly impacted, like Alberta’s formerly booming renewable industry, those aghast at the outright corruption of the “14 Words Smith” administration, or you know anyone who has to pay a power bill in this province, the regulated rate being higher than it ever has been at this current moment. I personally am outraged, and I’m disgusted with anyone who wants to carry water for these carpetbaggers.
Tyme for leson on how too rite English sentense and spel, Randall. Bloger man all reddy haz job.
Thnak yu, Tam. I new I cud count on yuz guys. DJC
Randall Ronahan: Try not to type if you are drunk. Nothing is fake with the article. The only thing that is fake, are the UCP, who aren’t even a Conservative party. Reformers aren’t Conservatives. They make life harder for people. We didn’t see this foolishness under Peter Lougheed.
Hmm, let’s see: no punctuation, riddled with spelling mistakes, and barely legible…looks like a conservative talking point to me.
The issue is not the spelling; it’s the sentiments.
Unless the AI crowd has gotten sophisticated enough to model “hasty and ignorant ranting”?
PJP: It’s entirely possible the AI has done just that. DJC
Posted at 6 AM? Dude. Seriously. Before you post a comment, either get some sleep (if you’re coming home from night shift) or wait till after your second cup of coffee (if you’re just getting up).
The only thing I can say after reading that is … You should stop after the fourth one.
Oil sands crude is some of the dirtiest oil in the world. It makes up about 80% of the crude shipped out of Alberta. https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/dashboard/oil-production/#:~:text=Non%2Dconventional%20(or%20oil%20sands,oil%20decreased%20by%2D1.7%25.
There are lots of people, like me, upset about this moratorium. Maybe just not a lot of people in your bubble.
Perhaps you need to widen your horizons!
Rural Alberta is opposed to renewable energy sources, is it? Why then is there a ~700 kW solar power installation in Sexsmith, 20 km north of Grande Prairie — an area whose MLA had, untimely the most recent election, had been Kenney Government Finance Minister Travis Toews?
https://staging.solaralberta.ca/case-study/town-of-sexsmith-solar-farm/
So much bumpf.
If there is a more pro – oil, right wing, socially conservative place in this province than Sexsmith do let me know. Small town alberta not being a monoculture does not mean UCP strongholds get to pretend they didn’t just vote for what they just voted for.
That was then. This is now. We’re in the Take Back Alberta/Smith-UCP era. TBA and the oil and gas industry have the premier’s ear.
So much for the “stand up for Alberta jobs in our energy sector” malarkey printed on UCP campaign pamphlets. The election’s over. Jobs are being eliminated by the not-so-invisible hand of government. Promises have been tossed in the garbage like those election pamphlets.
Who was it that said, “The lunatics are trying to take over the asylum”?
Sexsmith has always been and will always be a socon stronghold. They vote UNIFORMLY. The finance minister was the board chair of the VERY socially conservative bible school in that town, like cmon man, Sexsmith Ab ? Give your head a shake.
Sorry Abs, but the Gospel according to UCP/ TBA says that “energy” is oil and gas–period. Renewables aren’t “real energy” because they don’t come out of holes in the ground. (I guess geothermal doesn’t count, either; it does come out of the ground, but you can’t burn it.)
She’s a beaut! Good Lord! What have our neighbours elected? Two dozen expired 7-11 hotdogs, led by a room temperature word salad, masquerading as a talk show host? Pinch me! I must be dreaming!
We can only hope that Post Media quietly slips its moorings and sails off, never to be heard from again. And we can only hope that Bell and Braid open a home for retired petroleum workers overlooking the canals of Airdrie. Catchy name. Godspeed….
These green nuts give your head a shake oil and gas will be around for long time and this wind and solar are a joke as the eu is waking up to this reality.
Rt: The real cause for concern will be water. There is far too much proof of that.
Right Rt, because as everyone knows the wind and the sun are just passing fads. They haven’t been around for very long. Not like oil and gas have. [That’s sarcasm – look it up]
Europe and especially Germany, it seems, are waking up to the fact that being dependent on natural gas is a liability.
Rt, you oilpatch diehards keep staring into the rose-coloured rear-view mirror—and insisting it’s the view through the windshield. Natural gas may survive, but bitumen is likely the first to go. “Conventional” light crude is played out in Alberta.
Guys like you need to up your game, and get out of the oilpatch before your jobs disappear. If you’re lucky you might get a job plugging old wells. Danielle Smith’s gift to small oil companies, RStar, might save you for a while. Good luck.
Alberta voted for the UCP. It is about time that Alberta voters wake up to the reality that the UCP and Danielle Smith do not have a long term plan and it will cost us in the future, even now….compare your power bills to any other Western province
But…. being awake is bad for “conservatives” now.
This is a blatant attempt by Danielle Smith to block the 2035 net-zero federal electricity target. This roadblock is not likely to end in seven months, given this motive. It sounds a lot like blackmail: if the federal government doesn’t play Smith’s game Smith’s way on this and other files, she’ll pack up “her” toys and go home. Forget the climate crisis. Here on the RMS Alberta, our ideology-driven captain won’t believe in the iceberg until “her” ship hits it. Let the band play on, and pray that Alberta was not built with slag bolts.
If the electricity grid is unreliable with the addition of solar and wind power, it must be very, extremely, super-duper unreliable as it is now, without solar and wind. Smith probably doesn’t even know that here in Canada, we winterize wind turbines, much like our vehicles. We’re not Texas!
Yes, solar technology does produce electricity in the winter. (But as our climate crisis accelerates, we use more and more electricity in the summer months to air condition our homes. Of course you have to believe that your home is getting hotter in the summer in order to air condition it.)
I have some other questions about how killing the renewables industry and removing competition in this province will increase electricity prices for consumers in this province. The citizens of Alberta don’t seem to matter, which begs the question,”Who does Danielle Smith work for?” Not the people. She represents oil and gas companies and their billionaire owners.
It seems likely that the renewables industry will take the Alberta government to court. The people of Alberta will pay coming and going for lawyers and settlements, in addition to the higher electricity rates resulting from Smith’s actions.
We’re at the irreconcilable differences phase of Danielle Smith’s leadership now. What’s the point in letting this one-sided, dysfunctional relationship continue? It will only lead to greater unhappiness and suffering. There is no way to win in a narcissistic relationship.
When Alberta’s alt-right brain trust carved up utilities for their political owners, they organized the electricity market in a way that discourages excess capacity. This is the same in the notoriously unreliable Texas power grid.
Typically, ignorant TBA premier Dani blames Ottawa for her party’s own malfeasance and her greedy supporters eat her lies up.
Somebody in government had better get to work setting NAIT straight:
https://www.nait.ca/nait/about/newsroom/2018/solar-panels-shine-despite-winters-blast-nait-st
What? Only three per cent loss from solar cells during the winter? Angling the panels to 45 degrees during snowfall accumulation is optimal to maximize energy production? This is all nonsense: the iotas, what about the iotas??? Quick — cut all funding for trade school programs in renewable energy! There’s no point training people for non-existent jobs in a field with no future in this province anyways!
Here is a detailed take down of the UCP policy attacking renewable electrical generators titled: “Alberta Halts New Renewables Because They Were Too Successful”
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/08/alberta-halts-new-renewables-because-they-were-too-successful/
I’m of the mind that political parties, including the party in power, should have to cover every/all legal expenses incurred due to their own actions and negligence. Taxpayers picking up the legal bills should be made illegal. And if the party can’t cover the costs from their own war chest and end up having to fold, so be it. Don’t run your mouth if you’re not willing to face the consequences. Besides, I’m sure Cherokee Dani’s O&G friends could front her some coin, if for no other reason than to keep their puppet in power.
All Canadian children who played outside regularly this summer were poisoned to some extent by the smoke choked skies. All Canadian children who played outside this summer in the rain were poisoned to some extent by PFAS in the rain and to a lesser extent by the smoke choked skies. If only we could ask premier David Parker what the orders were that God gave him to give to his puppet Danielle Smith, then we’d have a much better idea of what is really going on.
There may be another shadow over this solar-powered storm. Lisa Young, in her latest blog, has pointed out an under-reported development from the Alberta Utilities Commission. There was a conflict between a solar-energy company and some outfit that owned the mineral rights to land where the solar guys intended to build a PV facility. (I thought the Crown owned mineral rights, so how does a private company buy them—and then lease the mineral rights to oil companies?)
Twitter version: PrairieSky Royalty Ltd (PSK) wanted Nova Solar to pay them for the extra expense of working around/ between Nova’s solar panels if, repeat, emphasis, IF PrarieSky ever leases the drilling rights. AUC said no. Via a tweet from professor Aidan Hollis, we get the analysis of AUC’s decision from Nigel Bankes, on the ABLawg web site.
Lisa Young’s Substack post is here: https://lisayoung.substack.com/p/strategy
Nigel Bankes’ ABLawg post is here: “Conflict in Paradise” (3 August 2023), online: ABlawg, http://ablawg.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Blog_NB_AUC_Conflict_in_Paradise.pdf
Did somebody from PrairieSky Royalty Ltd complain to Danielle Smith, that stalwart defender of truth, justice and the oilpatch?
Welcome to the Danielle Smith/ TBA rodeo, folks. Bull riding events are scheduled for the next four years. Bulls–t-shoveling will take at least four years after that.
I wish journalism would stick with facts and do away with harmful and damaging descriptions of who said what. What happened to objectivity in the news?
Gord: I’m not sure what the point of your point is, but just to be clear the mission of this blog is to comment on the news from a particular perspective. If I reveal some facts in the process that are “news,” more often than not it’s because the so-called media isn’t doing its job properly. As for what happened to objectivity in the news, it was pretty well destroyed when major Canadian media were bought up by far right owners like Conrad Black and U.S. vulture capitalist funds. I do try to add a little balance to the conversation, but I am just one guy. If you are a subscriber to the notion there is such a thing as a “liberal, woke” media in Canada, you have been drinking Lord Black’s bathwater for too long. DJC
That’s the touch I like! You crack me up! https://youtu.be/jjO63_XLF_g?t=3
Sheesh DJC, I generally enjoy your writing style and viewpoint, but this time you have gone too far. Referencing one drinking the bathwater of Lord Black of Crossharbour conjures up too many unsettling images (said Lord in the buff, the state of the tepid water, consumption of said liquid). For future cases you need to affix a warning label to your (admittedly effective) rebuttals!
I can’t make that promise, Dave. DJC
Looks like we’ve got some ridiculous “renewables can never replace O&G” folks in the crowd so let me say the part that they aren’t saying. Renewables do not present the opportunity for massive wealth stratification or generation. There will never be a Rockefeller of renewables, they imply the death of capitalism as we know it basically, oil is what drives our casino economy (well that and drugs). If you think of it that way it makes a lot more sense why they’re so suicidal in their devotion to oil and gas.
Look, no one is saying we switch on the renewables grid tomorrow and fossil fuels are finished, but the dithering these folks (or outright bans in the case of the UCP ) is pushing out the time we have to transition INCREASING the likelihood that it will be a rough one. As I’ve said before, China and India are building out renewables at a MASSIVE rate, and someday we will have to, the real question is how far behind will we have fallen by insisting on using century old technology to power our transportation and energy networks.
We can’t even get a train to service the corridor that 80% of the province lives along ffs.
ANY TRAIN, I’m not talking bullet trains which would run from Edmonton to Calgary faster than you could fly. This province is ridiculous, all these riches, just going out the door to people that don’t live here and think we are stupid.
In their effort to “own” the Libs, PMJT, and the Green Lobby, Danielle Smith and the UCP/TBA are ready to scorch the earth and bleed everyone in Alberta dry for the sake of their O & G patrons.
This is not time-out to investigate the feasibility of sustainable energy projects; this is a willingly blind and idiotic campaign to smash any zero-carbon iniatives in Alberta. If the O & G lobby doesn’t like the competition, use their UCP/TBA hacks to stop and drive out all sustainable energy projects. And to take it another step further, place a punitive tax of 9,000% on all EVs, effectively banning them in Alberta. The GOP psychos in the US Congress tabled legislation to ban EVs because they are a “threat to national security and the US fossil fuel industry”.
Danielle Smith intends to own the Libs by making life harder to Alberta. Alberta voted for this, so they better suck it up.
The seven month freeze on renewable electricity generation has to be lifted to create jobs.
This is a strange move altogether. The Premier seems to forget that coal is a heavy pollutant and environmental destructive to mine. Natural gas will run out. Why put a wrench in the works of a successful business. As another writer points out wind farms do indeed operate in winter. In the UK, I might add, all coal mines are shuttered. I think myself, Travis Toewes might have known something of environmental accounting and therefore would not have made this decision. I can only hope that over the next 4 years this government does not cause irreparable harm to the underpinnings of the Alberta economy.
TOEWS LITERALLY OWNS AN OIL COMPANY, no, I do not think for a second the finance minister is unaware of climate change or cares about it at all other than how it impacts his bottom line. He’s a fake rancher too. Despite his success in the circles of power, he’s a loser, and a disappointment to many people who have known him for decades.
How anyone expects rational action from someone who materially benefits to such a high degree for IRRATIONAL behaviour escapes me completely.
He’s acting rationally, it makes him wealthy, he’s acting in his material interest as almost all people do. Pay attention when folks tell you who they are.
This is exactly the sort of wacky thing that many people were afraid Smith and her gang would do. They are unpredictable and tend to do harmful things to pander to their base that are neither wise or necessary.
You would think with power rates going through the roof, Alberta would benefit from all the extra generation capacity it could get right now. Rates have doubled in the last month or so. Not to mention all the jobs being generated in the growing solar and wind power sectors and the beneficial diversification it provides. It also makes our province a caricature laughingstock in the rest of the country. A bunch of climate change deniers or minimizers, whose provincial government is held captive by the fossil fuel industry.
So, we supposedly have a deregulated power sector, except when the government at a whim wants to step in and control it with a heavy hand without warning or much good reason. This is not a free market approach, this is ad hoc chaos and it is not helpful except for perhaps the established companies in this field who now can gouge consumers for longer while increased power supply is restricted or delayed.
Apparently, Alberta’s TBA government’s owners would like people to believe that batteries don’t exist.
No, that’s not a battery…. THIS is a battery…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/14/1126523766/water-batteries-could-store-solar-and-wind-power-for-when-its-needed
No need to spend our days in high dudgeon over this. We ought to marshall our energy and resources for the next election. The truthful explanation for the seven month halt to wind and solar development is simple. Smith was told by the people that run the province to stop the development of renewable energy and she did as she was told.
It is painfully obvious by now that the thinkers, problem solvers, experts, progressives and intellectuals that show up to vote in this province are outnumbered and there is not a lot we can do about it for the next four years when we have to win over more rubes. Hunker down folks, this is just the beginning.
Lucky for Ms. Smith, the Calgary Co-op compostable bag drama will quickly eclipse this issue with an opportunity to try out the new Sovereignty Act. I’m getting whip-lash from the flip-flopping. Will that be something I can get addressed in my yet-to-be received $300 Health Spending Account?
Poor excuse for Neudorf .. if it was a RStar meeting the so called scheduling glitch would have been overridden. Remember the massive fires and Smith chose to attend a function than deal with the fire crisis, leaving people homeless? Unbelievable what this caucus is capable of.
Conservative Alberta is Canada’s most corrupt estate since they willfully and repeatedly choose corrupt governance.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/scrapping-environmental-studies-for-power-lines-called-great-mistake-1.702723
So if it is now DS’s power grid can we blame her for the current cost of electricity?
Perhaps she can also put a cap on those prices/fees and riders she is charging us. /Sarcasm off
This is # two. Don’t even think about three! https://youtu.be/GlS5HNzvrQk?list=OLAK5uy_n9AJBMRz4uCr5TOwJnD9xVn_d2B3pCSD0&t=2